The Brief

The dual strike by unions representing actors and writers has brought Hollywood to a standstill. It’s the biggest strike in more than six decades as the Writers Guild and actors union SAG-AFTRA together represent more than 170,000 workers who are now on the picket lines instead of at work.

Even as union members advocate for better wages, residuals and regulations on the use of artificial intelligence, they know another key benefit is at risk in the short-term: health insurance.

Affordable, generous and increasingly hard to qualify for

The union health insurance is predicated on the notion that members work consistently and lucratively enough to make a minimum amount of money, which makes it difficult to first attain and then sustain.

Often referred to in hushed, reverent tones as the “Cadillac of health insurance” by those who have it, the policy offered by the Writers Guild feels like a holdover from a bygone age.

• No monthly premiums.
• $600 per year to cover the rest of your immediate family.
• Deductibles that are in the hundreds — not thousands — of dollars.

The bar for entry is high. Writers must earn a little over $41,700 in covered union work a year to qualify for coverage and residuals don’t count. The income requirement continues to rise, which coupled with the increasingly uncertain reliability of employment means even experienced writers can have a hard time qualifying.

Writers can accumulate credits by qualifying for WGA health insurance for 10 years and by earning more than $100,000 in covered work. Top earners can rack up three points per year, which can then be cashed in when writers experience a dry spell and can’t make the minimum income requirement, but coverage ends the quarter after the credits are used up.

For example, a writer who qualifies for health insurance for 10 years but earns less than $100,000 can cash in all their points and continue their insurance for up to a year and a half if they are only insuring themselves.

But insuring dependents cost more credits, meaning people with families have less of a stop-gap to fall back on.

As the strike stretches on into another quarter, many union writers are furtively calculating how many credits they have and how long this temporary measure will buy them, if they have credits at all.

Health insurance benefits for actors

In contrast, residual payments do count toward the $26,000 per year that striking SAG-AFTRA members must earn to qualify for health insurance offered by the union — another reason increasing residual payments, especially from streamers like Netflix, are a high priority for members who are on the margins.

Plan premiums from SAG-AFTRA are $125 per month for union members. For a family of four or more, the monthly cost rises to $249 per month or $2,988 per year. That’s less than half of the $6,680 that the average California worker with employer-sponsored health insurance paid for family coverage in 2022, according to a report by the California Health Care Foundation.

Issues with access to these benefits

Members of both unions said it took them years to make enough money to qualify for the union health insurance, while other union members who have worked in the industry for years never have. Both SAG-AFTRA and WGA were approached for interviews about their health insurance offerings. SAG-AFTRA declined to be interviewed and WGA sent LAist a link to their FAQ page.

Could studios and streamers continue coverage?

They could, but it’s unlikely.

In July, IATSE president Matt Loeb called for studios and streamers to offer an extension of healthcare benefits to below the line workers who may lose them if they fall short of qualifying during the strikes. IATSE is not on strike.

“Make no mistake — if the studios truly cared about the economic fallout of their preemptive work slowdown against below-the-line crewmembers, they could continue to pay crewmembers and fully fund their healthcare at any moment, as they did in 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic” Loeb wrote.

Half of the trustees of the Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plan are represented by companies involved in the strike. The WGA’s strike FAQ tells members “there is no Health Fund requirement that the Health Plan extend health insurance coverage during a strike, and Trustees are 50% management and 50% Guild.”

“The moments that I've been at risk of or have lost health insurance in the past pre-strike were not moments when I wasn't working,” said Susanna Fogel, a filmmaker who is a member of both the WGA and DGA unions. “I was working, but there were particulars to the work that just made it fall short or fall in the wrong month to stay covered. So it was just always a stress,” she said.

Should the unions simply drop the income requirement to a lower amount so more members could qualify? Alex Winter, a longtime member of three industry unions, doesn't think so.

“It seems draconian to turn back to the unions and say, well, since we have these oligarchs who are hoovering up all the profits let's try to take what few squirrel nuts we have and scatter them out amongst whoever survived staying in the industry as opposed to fighting to get equitable pay, which is what we're doing,” Winter said.

A new California law could help strikers on the margins

All California workers who lose their employer-sponsored health insurance may be eligible for the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, or qualify to buy health insurance through Covered California, where they may receive subsidies that bring down the monthly cost of insurance. But those premiums will likely be far higher than SAG-AFTRA or WGA plans, at a time when striking workers are making much less money.

But writers and actors who lose their union health insurance as a result of the strike could benefit from a new California law that took effect July 1, 2023 aimed at averting just that situation.

AB2530 received $2 million in funding under the new state budget. To qualify, a union worker must first lose coverage as a result of the strike. According to Covered California spokesperson Craig Tomiyoshi, eligible workers will have their premiums covered as if their incomes were just above the Medicaid eligibility level.

Here’s an example. A single striking worker in their mid-30s who lives in West Hollywood loses their union health insurance during the strike due to the work stoppage. This person goes to Covered California’s exchange to find health insurance. They make $50,000 and are offered a middle-tier “benchmark” plan that would cost them about $320 a month in premiums. Under the new law for striking workers, that person selecting the same plan would pay nothing in premiums – as if that person made $20,385 a year — for the duration of the strike.

Not all striking workers will enroll in a free plan. Striking workers will be able to pick plans that are more expensive than the benchmark plan. If they do, they will pay the difference in premiums.

“At this point, we are not aware that WGA or SAG-AFTRA members have lost health coverage, but if any Californian has lost coverage, we encourage them to contact Covered California as soon as possible,” Tomiyoshi wrote in an email response. He added that people anticipating losing their union health insurance should also get in touch.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2024, another law kicks in. Covered California will end deductibles on the middle-tier benchmark plans, meaning a striking worker could receive free premiums under one law and no deductibles beginning in the New Year, if the labor dispute lasts that long.

Californians are required to have health insurance for at least nine months of the year, or they risk paying a hefty penalty during tax season.

Crews left out

The new law doesn’t cover crew members who are not part of the striking unions but have lost health insurance due to the work stoppage.

A new mutual aid group was created to fill that gap.

The Union Solidarity Coalition known by the acronym TUSC has raised more than $200,000 to give assistance to IATSE and Teamsters members, said founding member Alex Winter.

“I don't know anyone, honestly, in a lot of the primary crew areas who [aren't] in danger of losing their health insurance, and I know a lot of people who have lost their health insurance,” Winter said.

The idea for the non-profit began with conversations between crews and filmmakers, said Fogel, who is a fellow founding TUSC member.

“Because their coverage is based on the hours that they get within a certain window of time, some of the [crew members] mentioned they or people they knew were at risk for not making their hours due to productions shutting down, or if they opted not to cross a picket line, that could cost them their health insurance,” she said.

TUSC has partnered with the Motion Picture and Television Fund and its Entertainment Health Insurance Solutions, which acts as an insurance navigator for people in the industry.

According to TUSC’s website, “MPTF and EHIS will talk directly to members in need, and get them signed up for the health plan that best suits their needs. The TUSC fund will then pay the premiums.”

Fogel says it’s about making sure that everyone in the industry has access to high-quality health care no matter the current industry conditions.

“Every so often when there's one group of people that are going on strike and it's our turn to strike right now, we just wanted to kind of let the other unions know that we consider ourselves to be part of a collective and we hope that they feel that love from us,” Fogel said.

The California Democratic Party is betting that a tried-and-true playbook and standard-bearer candidates offer their best chance to take back the U.S. House in November’s midterms rather than fresh faces and more populist policy planks.

The country’s largest state Democratic party endorsed a slate of aging congressional incumbents at its convention in San Francisco after a weekend that illustrated the high stakes in this year’s midterms. In congressional districts without an incumbent, the party gave the nod to a handful of current state lawmakers who, while younger, are party insiders compared to the grassroots political outsiders who are running as Democrats in contested races.

Among the incumbents who sailed to endorsements were Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, 74, who’s running for his 15th term, and Rep. Brad Sherman of the San Fernando Valley, 71, seeking a 16th term.

In the open race to succeed the late Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represented the state’s rural north for more than 13 years, state Sen. Mike McGuire overwhelmingly won the party’s endorsement despite an internal spat with party leadership that almost forced a vote of the entire convention floor.

At right, actor Sean Penn watches U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, candidate for California governor, speak during the afternoon general session at the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 2026.

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The outcome, while not surprising, disappointed several grassroots political outsiders who sought to give their party a facelift and push beyond the anti-Trump rhetoric that its leaders have relied on since President Donald Trump was first elected in 2016.

“This weekend just reaffirmed why we need to push the Democratic Party for new leadership. It also reaffirmed to me why people are leaving the Democratic Party,” said Mai Vang, a progressive Sacramento city councilmember.

Vang is the first elected official to challenge Rep. Doris Matsui in the 20 years since she took over her late husband’s Sacramento-area seat in the 7th Congressional District. Matsui, 81, ultimately won the endorsement despite a challenge from Vang. She argued the endorsement caucus had unfairly allowed Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who was not a delegate for the 7th District, to give a speech in support of Matsui, a 10-term incumbent.

Jake Levine, a former Biden White House aide who’s running against Sherman, argued that Democrats can’t keep beating the same anti-GOP, anti-Trump drum without also outlining a clear vision for addressing young voters’ anxieties on issues like the high cost of housing and a scarcity of good-paying jobs.

“Yes, we need to flip the House, but we also need to put a new generation of leaders in the House when we take it over,” Levine said. “In order to sustain a party that can keep winning for many more years, we need a new message. And the people who have gotten us to where we are today are still stuck in the politics of yesterday.”

The weekend also served as a swan song for Pelosi, the San Francisco political titan and first woman speaker who announced last year that she would retire after her current term. Pelosi was repeatedly lauded for cultivating generations of elected officials, including Sen. Adam Schiff. His uncharacteristically fiery and profanity-laden speech on the convention floor spoke to the pent-up anger and frustration with the Trump administration that has turned even the party’s mellower figures into all-out fighters.

Schiff bellowed from the stage that the massive turnout for Proposition 50, which redrew congressional districts to favor Democrats, sent a resounding message to the Trump administration: “When you poke the bear, the bear rips your f—ing head off!”

'We need people who know what they’re doing'

In their own defense, time-tested incumbents argue that now is not the time to bring in an entirely new class of lawmakers as House Democrats try to reign in a rogue second Trump administration.

“This is not the time to wimp out,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chair of California’s Democratic congressional caucus and a close friend and supporter of Matsui. “We need people who know what the heck they’re doing. And she does.”

Still, Levine and others lamented that recently, the party has mostly paid lip service to uplifting the next generation of leaders rather than actually giving younger voters a voice in elected office. Failing to tailor the party’s message to younger voters and instead doubling down on the party’s historic deference to seniority, he argued, will continue to drive voters away.

One potential bright spot for progressives and the anti-establishment wing of the party was in the endorsement race for the 22nd Congressional District, a Central Valley seat that Democrats hope to flip from moderate Republican Rep. David Valadao.

Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, candidate for California’s 22nd Congressional District, speaks during a caucus meeting at the California Democratic Convention at Moscone West in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 2026.

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Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a physician and political moderate from Bakersfield, had been heralded as the Democratic frontrunner and boasted endorsements from the powerful Service Employees International Union of California, a labor group, and a swath of state and federal elected officials. But she still failed to capture the party endorsement after her Democratic opponent, Visalia educator and college professor Randy Villegas, built a groundswell of support and also raised more than her last quarter. The party did not endorse a candidate in the race.

Villegas said several delegates told his campaign they wanted to support him, but “there's been intimidation, outright coercion,” by Bains’ camp.

Bains, through a spokesperson, denied that she or any of her supporters coerced or intimidated any delegates into voting for her.

Jeanne Kuang and Juliet Williams contributed reporting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

If you’re a California homeowner and you’ve been feeling chilly this winter, there are plenty of reasons to go get a heat pump.

An all-electric, energy-efficient alternative to gas-burning furnaces, heat pumps are widely seen as the climate-friendly home heater of choice.

They can do double-duty as both home heaters and AC-units and are pretty good at maintaining a constant temperature inside a home without the blast-then-cool-off cycle typical of a furnace.

What about a guaranteed lower monthly utility bill? Not in California.

Call it California’s heat pump conundrum.

On the one hand, California has hyperambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to curb the worst effects of a changing climate. Most experts see the electrification of buildings — swapping furnaces, water heaters, stoves and ovens that run on burning fossil fuel with appliances plugged into California’s increasingly green electrical grid — as a necessary step toward meeting those goals.

California has built one of the most aggressive heat pump strategies in the country. The state aims to install six million heat pumps in homes by 2030. Lawmakers are also moving this year to boost heat pump adoption – proposing to streamline permitting, and make it easier to electrify homes.

On the other hand, California’s residential electricity prices are among the highest in the country — expensive even compared to its also pricey natural gas. That makes heat pumps a tough sell to many Californians.

A new Harvard University study maps exactly where that reality bites – and tries to explain why some places are more heat-pump friendly than others.

The public is “overwhelmed with these sorts of plans now for decarbonization: ‘This by 2030,’ ‘this by 2050,’” said Roxana Shafiee, an environmental science policy researcher at Harvard University. “But then you scratch the surface a bit more and you look at things like electricity prices.”

Reaching those goals amid such high prices is a tough circle to square, said Shafiee.

By looking at residential energy costs, usage and winter temperatures in every county in the United States, Shafiee and Harvard environmental science professor Daniel Schrag found in a recent paper that typical households living across the American South and the Pacific Northwest would likely see lower utility bills by making the switch to a heat pump.

Average homes in northern midwestern states, in contrast, would see their bills increase. That’s partly because heat pumps work by extracting heat from outdoor air, compressing it, and piping it indoors, a thermal magic trick that’s harder to perform in places with subzero winters. It’s also thanks to the region’s relatively cheap gas.

Then there’s California: A surprisingly mixed bag.

Though the state’s temperate coast is ideal for heat pump adoption, high residential electricity prices can make swapping a gas furnace for a heat pump a pricey proposition. That’s especially true in counties where homes tend to be larger, winters are colder or electricity is costly. .

Quentin Gee, a manager at the California Energy Commission, said the advantage of heat pumps comes down to thermodynamics. Unlike a gas furnace, which burns fuel to create heat, a heat pump compresses and expands a refrigerant, like a refrigerator in reverse. That moves heat from outside into a home — allowing it to deliver several units of heat for every unit of electricity it uses.

Even in PG&E territory, where electricity rates may be some of the highest in the U.S., Gee said that efficiency can allow heat pumps to compete with — and in some cases beat — gas on operating costs, depending on local rates and home characteristics.

In lower-cost municipal utility regions such as Sacramento’s SMUD, he said heat pumps can be a clear financial win.

“Gas prices have also gone up over time as well — so both are tricky when it comes to heat pumps versus, say, a gas furnace,” Gee said.

Between 2001 and 2024, average retail gas prices have gone up by 80% in California, according to federal data. Retail electricity rates, padded out with wildfire prevention costs and state-manded social programs, have increased by twice as much.

Even in parts of California where the average home isn’t likely to save with a heat pump, there are plenty of exceptions. Smaller, well-insulated homes can often stay warm with minimal output from a heat pump.

For some homeowners, solar panels have helped bridge the gap. Doug King, a green building consultant in San Jose, installed his first heat pump in 2021 alongside a new rooftop solar system; those panels more or less covered the monthly cost of running the heat pump. A second unit installed last year has pushed his bills higher. "But that's fine, I don't mind," he said. "I was willing to pay a bit of a premium for using electricity over gas anyway."

Homes that already use old-fashioned electrical baseboard or space heaters are guaranteed to save on monthly costs by switching since that entails swapping an inefficient electrical heating system that uses a ton of energy (“basically like heating your home with a toaster,” said Shafiee) for heat pumps that use up to 60% less.

But for all of California’s reputation as a climate champion, most of its homes don’t rely on electric heat. Nearly two-thirds use natural gas, well above the national average of 51%.

That isn’t surprising, said Lucas Davis, a UC Berkeley energy economist.

Looking at 70 years of home heating data across the country, Davis’ research has found that the best predictor of whether a household uses electricity to stay cozy in the winter is the price of energy.

“To this day, where do we see that electric heating is the most common? Throughout the southeast,” said Davis. “What do we know about the southeast? Cheap electricity.”

The consequences of costly electricity extend well beyond any individual household’s ambitions for a heat pump or its utility bill. Using fossil fuels to heat up water, warm indoor air and cook food inside homes and businesses was responsible for 13% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Gas-powered cars and trucks used for private use make up another 16%.

Focusing on upfront costs

Heat pumps are a 19th century invention and started popping up regularly in American homes in the 1960s, but you would be forgiven for thinking they’re a new technology.

Spurred on by concerns over climate change and policies meant to address it, heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces each year since 2021, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean-energy research nonprofit. Demand saw a particularly sharp spike after 2022 thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-era law that threw rebates and tax credits at homeowners.

Installation costs can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars, which is why most federal and state policies promoting heat pump adoption have focused on defraying them. In California, the push runs through multiple agencies:

• The California Energy Commission tightens building codes that steer new construction toward all-electric homes. 
• The Public Utilities Commission sets rate rules and oversees utility rebate programs. 
• Utilities offer rebates and special rate plans. 
• State and federal dollars have reduced upfront costs, especially for lower-income households.

This year state lawmakers are considering bills to speed up the local permitting process for heat pumps and to require gas utilities to offer homeowners cash to electrify their homes in lieu of replacing an old gas line.

Even as the federal supports subsided with President Trump’s return to the White House, installation costs are “pretty competitively priced with traditional units, especially since in most cases, you are installing two appliances for the price of one,” said Madison Vander Klay, a California policy advocate for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a national nonprofit which represents appliance manufacturers and utilities.

That may not be the case for all homeowners.

Many homes need new wiring, larger breakers or a full panel replacement, and some require upgrades to the service connection to the grid, said Matthew Freedman of The Utility Reform Network. Costs rise quickly when homeowners electrify more than just heating, he said.

Customers often underestimate how complex and costly that electrical work can be, he said, another uncertainty on top of the potential for long-term rate savings.

Installation costs aside, month-to-month electricity costs remain an obstacle.

Last year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report warning that California’s residential electricity rates are among the highest in the country — nearly double the national average — and rising much faster than inflation.

The report, authored by LAO analyst Helen Kerstein, cautioned that those high rates could undermine the state’s climate strategy by discouraging households from switching to electric cars and appliances like heat pumps from gas-powered ones.

“If I'm a consumer, I'm going to be thinking about — not just, ‘is this good for the environment?’ That's certainly one consideration, but also, ‘is this something I can afford?” Kerstein said. “Unless folks are saving money on the operating cost, it often doesn't pencil out.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Nick Reiner, the son of Hollywood legend Rob Reiner, pleaded not guilty Monday to murder charges stemming from the deaths of his parents in their Brentwood home.

Reiner, 32, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and special-circumstance allegations — multiple murders and use of a deadly weapon — that make him eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted.

Reiner is being held without bail.

Deputy Public Defender Kimberly Greene is representing him after high profile defense attorney Alan Jackson abruptly dropped out of the case in January, citing circumstances beyond his control.

It's not yet clear whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty in Reiner's case or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman has not yet announced a decision, but has said he will consider input from the Reiner family on the issue.

“We take the process in which the death penalty should be sought extremely seriously,” Hochman said after the arraignment. “It goes through a very rigorous process.”

It is common for prosecutors to weigh information from many sources before making a decision about whether to pursue capital punishment.

“We will be looking at all aggravating and mitigating circumstances and we have invited defense counsel to present to us both in writing and orally in a meeting any arguments they would like to make in consideration of going forward or not going forward with the death penalty,” Hochman said.

Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were found dead in their bedroom Dec. 14 from what the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office described as multiple sharp-force injuries.

Nick Reiner was arrested the same day near the University of Southern California, according to police.

Authorities have not identified a possible motive.

Nick Reiner has been open about his struggles with addition, mental health and stays in rehabilitation centers. In 2015, he co-wrote a film about a family struggling with a child’s addiction, which his father directed.

At the time of the killings, Reiner was living in a guest house on his parent’s property.

Reiner's next Superior Court hearing is set for April 29.

Fewer congressional contests are expected to be competitive this fall, compared with past election cycles, and experts say the extraordinary mid-decade redistricting efforts initiated by President Trump are largely to blame.

Fewer competitive seats means the overwhelming majority — more than 90% — of congressional races will pretty much be decided during primary elections, which see far fewer voters participate than general elections.

"Right now, we only rate 18 out of 435 races as toss ups, which means that less than 5% of Americans will truly be deciding who's in control of the House," David Wasserman, senior elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, told NPR.

This disparity in the voting power of Americans in congressional races has been a worsening problem for several election cycles.

Unite America Institute, which tracks what it refers to as the "primary problem" and advocates for election reforms, calculated that in 2024, just 7% voters elected 87% of U.S. House races.

Voters have self-sorted themselves geographically, and technology in recent years has allowed lawmakers to more effectively carve up congressional districts that give one party an advantage over another.

Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, said the mid-decade redistricting prompted by Trump last year has further reduced the number of competitive seats. His organization says 32 states currently don't have a single competitive congressional race.

"The primary problem is bad and getting worse," he told NPR. "We are about to enter a midterm election season that will be the least competitive of our lifetimes, which means that we will have, no matter who wins in November, the least accountable Congress of our lifetime."

Last year, Trump asked Texas lawmakers to redraw the state's congressional map to create five more seats that could favor Republicans in 2026. Democratic leaders in California responded, putting forward a successful ballot measure to circumvent the state's independent redistricting commission and create five more favorable seats for Democrats.

Lawmakers in other states, including North Carolina and Missouri, crafted new maps as well, and Florida and Virginia are among the states that may join them.

But so far, Wasserman said the redrawing of congressional boundaries ahead of this year's elections hasn't led to any "pronounced advantage" for either Republicans or Democrats.

"Instead, what it's done is it's eviscerated the competitive range of districts in which Americans have a real say over who controls Congress in November," he said.

Wasserman explained that even if one were to include races that Cook rates as "leaning" toward one party or another, that would only be 36 seats.

"That's still less than 10% of the House," he said. "By comparison, at this point in Trump's first term, we had 48 races that were competitive between the two parties."

Wasserman said new district lines in California and Texas are driving most of this.

"Whereas we used to have a robust number of Republicans from California and Democrats from Texas and Florida, today blue states' delegations are becoming bluer, red states' delegations are becoming redder," he said. "And there are fewer opportunities for bipartisan dialogue."

Primary voters tend to be more ideologically extreme than the general public

Troiano said there are some serious democratic issues raised by the fact that so few voters will have so much power to decide what party will control Congress.

For one, he says, primary voters are not representative of the broader American electorate. According to an analysis from his group, primary voters tend to be older, whiter, wealthier, more educated and more ideologically extreme than the general public.

"And so when you look at an old, white, wealthy Congress that is ideologically polarizing, can't get anything done, they reflect exactly who sent them there," Troiano said.

There have been some efforts in recent years to open up primaries to independent voters — which is the fastest-growing part of the U.S. electorate. New Mexico, for instance, now allows non-affiliated and independent voters to participate in party primaries. However, Louisiana and West Virginia recently went the other way, restricting some primaries to just registered party members. Currently, 17 states have either completely closed or partially closed primaries.

And in 2024, there were several ballot measures before voters in states like Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon that would have created nonpartisan primaries. But those statewide efforts failed across the board.

Unite America advocates for nonpartisan primaries or the inclusion of independent voters in party primaries for a slew of reasons, but one of their biggest arguments is that they allow more voters to take part in the most determinative elections.

And that's especially important, Troiano said, as more states whittle down the number of competitive seats.

"So if you think dysfunction and division is bad right now in Washington," he said, "it's going to get worse in the next congressional session because of the lack of competition in this year's elections."

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